How We Can Distinguish Between a Good and Bad Student’s Profile? Mimicking vs Transcending

By Hubert Ho | Head of Admissions Consulting Services, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions

Targeting elite US colleges or UK universities is very common among the high school students nowadays. There is no doubt that you will be one of them. During the research process, it is not hard to see that all those elite schools are looking for global leaders with specific talents. It comes across a very important discussion here. How to build a highly effective profile for the adcom to consider your application?

The most common method is to search around the past matriculation from your high school and see what those successful alumni possesses and then try to mimic what they did. You will think that it will be the safest way to guarantee results. Conversely, it is the quickest way to guarantee failure. Since everyone is different in various ways including dream, background, capabilities, etc, it is hard to copy what the past people did. At the same time, admissions requirements keep changing every year now due to the easy access to information and data. Therefore, mimicking is not the right way anymore.

Before you start to build your own profile, you need to switch your mindset a bit first. For the recent admissions cycles, adcom was not trying to find the most suitable candidates for giving offers. They were looking for reasons to reject candidates as 99% were qualified and with stunning profile. One of my students asked me last week. With his current profile, how can he compete with those strong candidates? Those candidates he referred to are those have perfect academic scores with numerous of awards, publications, leadership roles, etc. The answer is very simple. You don’t need to think how to beat them as you just need to think about your own UNIQUENESS!!

Adcom sees a candidate’s profile as a good one when they cannot find any inconsistencies in it. What does it mean? A good profile should demonstrate the following elements, at least but not limited to AGRESSIVENESS, STRATEGY, MILESTONES, EXPANSION, PASSION and GROWTH. If you do not see those elements in your profile yet, it will be a good time for you to start re-designing yours!

Need more information on how to polish your profile? Come and speak with our Admissions Counselor: https://bit.ly/3teynbI

Mr. Hubert Ho

Head of Admissions Consulting Services, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions
Associate Member of IECA, Member of NACAC and AEE
MCom (Finance), UNSW
BCom (Management & Marketing), University of Wollongong

  • 10 years+ of experience in education industry
  • 100% of his students got admitted to Top 3 choices & Top 50 US National Colleges and G5 UK Universities
  • Proven track record helping students gain admission to US prestigious colleges including Yale University, Stanford University, Cornell University, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, Boston University

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